


Potential Energy

by fabella



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Barry did the thing, Character building, Dubious Science, Earth Two Adventuring, Fix-It, Harry doesn't know Barry did the thing, Long Distance Pining, M/M, Masturbation, Morality, Pining, Post-Season/Series 02, Responsibility, Romance, Season/Series 02, Superheros, Unresolved Emotional Tension, fantasies, ignore the handwaving behind the curtain, super people supering, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 05:35:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7031122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabella/pseuds/fabella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and Jesse return to Earth-2. Cisco never makes contact, but that's not the ending Harry is looking for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Potential Energy

It took three days at home before Harry landed in trouble again.

When the attack came, it was mid-day on a high traffic sidewalk outside of the public library. It was a blast of heat that missed him at first. Harry did a double take and another blast of heat slipped right past his nose and melted through the sign behind him. That’s when the screaming and running started. The area cleared of pedestrians like an invisible hand came down and scooped them up, leaving Harry facing a teenage girl in a singed jacket and jeans.

“Harrison Wells!” she screamed. Lava dripped from her closed fist.

Harry ran. She followed.

A block later, Harry skidded behind a dumpster.

“I don’t want to hurt you!”

“So don’t!” Harry yelled back, and oops. He dove away from the dumpster just as a ball of lava tipped it sideways. He scrambled through trash bags and discarded food trays. The girl came around the melting heap, arms held out from her sides and palms glowing pink. “I can help you,” Harry said, backing against the wall. “I have a daughter. She’s not much older than you. I’m the only family she has left.”

The girl stepped forward, one palm glowing brighter than the other.

“No one can help me,” she said. A streak of wet ash fell from her eye. “But I can make sure you don’t hurt anyone else.”

She lifted her hand. The veins in that arm lit up like the tip of a cigarette. 

Harry covered his head with his arms. Sorry, Jesse.

Cisco’s parting smile came to him then and Harry welcomed the comfort. Outside the barrier of his arms, a tremendous crack ricocheted off the alley walls. The rats eating trash by his foot scuttled over each other in a circle then took flight in all directions. Harry lifted his head. The girl stared back at him with wide eyes. They both looked down. A puddle of red blossomed on her shoulder.

She gasped wetly and stumbled forward, falling to her knees and cupping the wound. Detective West appeared behind her, holstering her weapon and opening a pair of metahuman cuffs Harry had designed. They glowed green from proximity to the girl.

Harry slid down the wall, the brick scraping his back. West hesitated with the cuffs. The girl trembled as she tried to hold her blood inside, red leaking between her fingers.

“Help her,” Harry rasped. “It’s a misunderstanding. She needs a hospital.”

The girl blinked at him through sweaty bangs. Soot covered her cheeks like mascara.

“One wrong move and I’m locking you down,” West warned the girl and then got to her knees as she took her suit jacket off. She covered the girl’s wounds and pressed firmly, making the girl scream out. “I need an ambulance,” West said into her wrist comm. Sweat dripped from her temples. “Between 15th and 16th street, gunshot wound, hostile victim. Metahuman. The area is secured but proceed with caution.” Detective West held onto the girl tightly and tossed an inquisitive look in his direction. “A misunderstanding, huh?”

Harry wiped a hand over his face, breathing for a moment. He’d almost died. It was a habit he wanted badly to break; Jesse would have been alone; he’d never see his friends again, never see Cisco---Detective West scanned his face. He was likely in shock.

“There’s a program I wanted to discuss with you,” Harry said. The girl blinked slowly in West’s arms and seemed to look far away, head lolling on her neck. “I think now is as good a time as any.” 

Detective West tilted her head. “You have a captive audience,” she said. “Do tell.”

Harry picked his glasses up from the ground and slid them into place. The left lens had cracked.

*

The Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Class One through Five Metahumans Act of 2016.

Cisco would have given it a better name.

West helped him recruit the team. If together the group of metahuman retrieval talents looked startlingly like Team Arrow, then he’d had the common sense to recognize what worked and to plagiarize the hell out of it. Cisco would be impressed. Only not with the name. 

Jesse hugged him when she found out and Harry soaked up the pride like she was his little girl again and he was responsible for the turning of the world. When she pulled back, she grabbed his shoulders and gave them a squeeze.

“The name, though,” she said, making a face. “Kind of boring?” 

“It says exactly what it is. It doesn’t need to be catchy.” 

The team renamed themselves without consulting him. They even created a website. 

Metahuman Ambassadors. It was a little catchy.

*

Harry woke one morning to an iced-over bedroom window, a snowstorm advisory warning, and it had been six months without contact. He rolled out of bed and got dressed in the blue light of the window and went into the bathroom to shave and meticulously not-style his hair like he had every day previously. He drank his coffee black with two sugars and just the right side of black tar consistency. Breakfast was a stale bowl of cereal in milk that smelled mostly okay in a bowl that was mostly clean. 

It mattered very little if he was in love. In this word, the Cisco he knew as good as never existed. 

He was outside supervising the automated fitting of chains on his truck tires when Jesse came back from her run. 

“You’re sickening,” he told her, pressing a few buttons to adjust the tightness of the chains. “Do you ever sleep in?” 

She huffed at him through the pink neck muffler. 

“I’m starved,” she groaned. 

“I ate the last of the cereal,” Harry said. 

“Unlike you, I know how to turn on a stove.” Jesse pirouetted in her baggy pink sweat pants and clomped through the four inches of fresh snow covering the drive way. 

She hardly slept, Harry knew. She did a lot of running. Some mornings she was just getting home when Harry was getting up. She hadn’t looked for a job or called the friends she’d come all the way back to this earth for. And yet she was always busy. They would need to have a conversation soon. Harry tugged on the chains and satisfied, climbed the truck to the driver’s side door. It could wait. She was an adult. So she kept telling him. It never really kicked. He’d felt her kick inside her mother’s stomach. He’d scared the boogeyman out from underneath the bed. Some things didn’t go away. 

He didn’t die on the ride to work. He did stop to help push a stalled car off the road. 

The driver, a tiny woman in her eighties, thanked him and hugged him and squeezed his cheeks and Harry grumbled and fought her off and seriously considered punching her out to end it before he won dubious levels of personal space by taking a look under the hood of her rust bucket. The whole thing was held together by chewing gum at best. It would shake apart on the road. 

Harry took off his gloves. 

It took him forty-five minutes to fix. In his defense, his hands really were cold.

When Harry climbed back inside the cab of the truck after kicking the snow from his boots, he pictured Cisco rolling his eyes practically out of his head and calling him an old man. Harry smiled into his gloves and asked the truck to start. 

“What temperature setting, Dr. Wells?” the truck asked in a tinny female voice. 

“Warm,” Harry said. 

Anna stood when Harry stomped into his office. She was dressed neatly, her hair pulled back into a clean pony tail. Harry pointed at the chair in front of his desk and she sat back down nervously while he took his hat, gloves, and coat off, then shook the snow off the rest of him. She sat with her hands in her lap, fingers balled into restrained fists. 

“How’s school?” he asked, going through the files on his desk. No. No. Wrong. More wrong. 

She cleared her throat and he looked up at her. Her eyeliner reminded him of the night in the alley, but it was definitely the work of Maybelline, not the Volcanic Eruption that had killed her parents while they slept and threatened anyone within a five block radius of her. 

“I’m getting a D in gym class,” Anna admitted. “The teacher hates me.” 

Harry sat down and threaded his hands behind his head while he considered the young woman across from him. She shifted uncomfortably, crossing and uncrossing her legs. 

“Is it fair that the gym teacher doesn’t like you?” 

“I may have deflated all the dodge balls,” Anna admitted. “That game sucks.” 

“Avoid getting caught next time,” Harry said simply and sat forward, elbows on the desk. “That grade shouldn’t affect your parole. There are other activities we could replace it with. Now tell me about your science fair project.” 

She hesitated, the wariness still present in her like a rough outline. Maybe it would always be there. A few months couldn’t erase what had happened to her. The mess he’d made. 

Her love of science prevailed. 

“So it’s like this,” she said, sitting forward with the bright gleam in her eyes. 

Harry’s mind went briefly to Cisco. It was that gleam. Cisco scooting to the edge of his chair as he hooked an idea, legs spreading apart to brace, hands twitching like he wanted to write it all down. Harry pushed the thoughts aside and nodded at Anna to continue. Cisco lingered, though. What did he look like on his back---what if Harry found Cisco sitting on the counter again and Harry just---pushed his knees apart and stepped between them and--- 

* 

It ate at Harry. 

He hadn’t asked for this attachment. 

Admit it, just admit it. He wanted Cisco on his knees. 

* 

Jesse enrolled in three separate self-defense classes and joined a boxing club. She came down the stairs one morning with a purple cheekbone and a puffy lip. Harry wordlessly held her jacket out until she rolled her eyes and let herself be swaddled and led to the truck. 

“Are you scared of something specific?” Harry asked her over coffee. 

Jesse swirled the spoon in her mug, destroying the foam star. 

“Scared isn’t the right word,” she said. She paused and stared at a couple at the next table feeding each other bits of scone. “I feel responsible for some of what happened last year. People have been hurt in our name. I need to make up for that somehow.” 

Harry looked around them. A young man with pastel blue hair filled coffee orders behind the counter. A line of customers chatted among themselves while holograms drifted around them advertising new cosmetic products. A little girl played hopscotch on the tiles. _One foot, two feet, jump really high!_ Jesse at that age had been preoccupied with becoming a ninja. 

“I’m the one responsible, Jesse.” And Zoom. “You had no part in it.” 

“I want to be responsible,” Jesse said, dragging Harry’s attention to her. The bruise on her face was darker in the sunshine, speckled purple and black at the center. Something in her eyes was a little bit like his own. There was an edge there. He wished he saw more of Sara in her. Her expression turned suddenly, forcibly brightened. “I’m starving, how about you? The muffin looks good. So does the chocolate mousse. How do you feel about buying me both? I’ll be nice---you can have some, too.” 

Harry blinked at her and waved a hand in acceptance. 

“You’re not pregnant, are you?” He asked when she dug into the mousse right after finishing the chocolate chip muffin. “I mean,” he said when she glared at him. “You’ve been having these cravings.” 

Jesse huffed at him. “It’s the classes,” she explained. “And gross, never ask me that again.” 

Harry held up his hands. Surrender. 

He did that a lot with Jesse. 

* 

Detective West contacted him the following weekend. A John Doe had been reported by the morgue. A Puerto Rican man in his mid-twenties had been brought in during the middle of the night. He’d been found abandoned in the woods outside of the city, cause of death unknown. There weren’t any other details yet. It could have been a hiking accident at this point. 

“It’s probably not him,” West said over the phone. “It doesn’t fit. Reverb died in the city.” 

Harry was already zipping his laptop bag shut. 

“I’ll take a look,” Harry said, putting his jacket on. 

“If you think it’s necessary.” West paused. “Listen, you’re doing good work, Dr. Wells. I’ve never thanked you. Some of the metahumans are really bad, but your program keeps good people from getting lost and---“ 

“I’ll call you if it’s him,” Harry said and disconnected. The office locked down on command: lights dimming, gates coming down, infrared lasers crisscrossing above the floor. It was a ten-minute drive to the morgue. This was the second time he’d made it this month. The same guard let him in after he swiped his access badge. The lights in the elevator had a habit of flickering out for three seconds between the first floor and the basement, where the morgue was located, but Harry was used to that by now. He waited grimly as the elevator clunked below the ground. 

The interest hadn’t beset him until returning to this earth. It wasn’t logical. Reverb wasn’t his Cisco, not even close, but the idea of a man with Cisco’s basic genetics, and, God, _Cisco’s face_ , rotting in a hole until someone found him kept Harry up at night. Harry met the usual attending at her desk where she was slurping a bowl of noodles, hair tied back messily. She sighed when she saw him, slipped her white coat on and showed him to the body without a word. The drawer pulled out with a metallic whine. She unzipped the body bag and Harry looked down at a dark-haired man with brown skin scarred black by frostbite. It wasn’t Reverb. 

“I don’t know him,” Harry said crisply. “Sorry to waste your time.” 

“See you soon,” the woman said with a cynical twist to her mouth. 

Harry didn’t wait for her to see him out. He knew the way. 

There was a file in a drawer in his bedroom. Francisco Ramon of this earth had a sealed juvenile record a mile long and an adult record that had escalated rapidly after the particle accelerator explosion. Harry thought about that file on the way back to work. The mug shots: a collection of sneers and flat eyes. This Francisco Ramon, the only one that should have mattered to Harry, could have had a different life. If only his parents hadn’t abandoned him. If only his brother hadn’t been killed during an armed robbery. If any of the dozen or so foster homes had been the good kind. 

In another world. 

Harry e-mailed Detective West later that day. 

“The John Doe was not familiar,” he typed. “Would you be amendable in assisting the rehabilitation of a 23-year-old woman who can levitate objects three times her weight and mass? She’s expressed interest in law enforcement, hence, the reason she carried that police vehicle three districts away. I’m attaching her profile. Awaiting your reply, Detective.” 

Six months. Had it really been six months and nothing? 

No Reverb. No Cisco. 

* 

Jesse came into his study without knocking, predictably banged up. A scrape on her elbow gleamed with a fresh scab and her nose looked a little off center, like a Picasso painting. She threw her gym bag on the floor with a thud and crossed her arms. 

“You went to the morgue again,” she said, just shy of yelling. 

Harry looked briefly away from his computer before refocusing. A stencil outline of his most important project floated from one window to another, measurements tallying rapidly in green numbers between the lines. Hartley needed this work up. Jesse cleared her throat. 

“What is it,” Harry said, typing in numeric adjustments. 

“Not healthy, for one,” she said. “Obsessive. Fixated. Self-destructive.” 

Harry growled and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes before putting them back on. She returned to clarity and her eyes were wet, hands fisted. Dammit, West. 

“Jesse,” he said carefully. “I’m fine.” 

“No. No, you’re not. You were. You were the happiest I had ever seen you, and then you came home. Why did you have to do that?” She looked inward. “I should have made you stay.” 

Harry pushed out of the chair and his back cracked from the rare change in position. He went around the desk, took her by the shoulders, and she glared up at him, already skeptical. 

“I’m doing important work. Good work. It satisfies me.” 

Jesse pushed his hands off. “Satisfaction isn’t happiness, Dad. Tell me, how many times a day do you think about the fact that they’ve never contacted you? Doesn’t it concern you?” 

“This feels like a trap. If I say it doesn’t concern me, you’ll throw around accusations of sociopathy. If I say it does, you’ll feel bad that I’m not happy.” 

Jesse raised one eyebrow. “So which is it?” 

Harry turned away and neatened the papers on his desk. 

“So I’m a little concerned.” Harry lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “I believed Cisco when he said he would reach out to me. I thought---” He slammed one book on top of another and jarred a bobble head of The Fake Jay Garrick. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. They belong there and I don’t.” 

“I saw the way you two looked at each other. Cisco meant it.” 

“Jesse, don’t.” 

“You really liked him, Dad.” 

“Please, Jesse,” Harry said. He could taste acid from his stomach lining. “I’m asking you. Don’t.” 

Jesse circled him to look at him straight on. 

“Stop chasing the ghost of his double then,” Jesse said. “No more revenge trips to terrible foster homes. No more visits to the morgue. Promise me.” 

“What if one of them is him and no one claims him?” Harry asked quickly. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “He deserves a proper burial, Jesse. He shouldn’t be alone.” 

“I’ll go next time. Just---focus on the rehabilitation program. Maybe that really will make you happy someday. I know waiting for a dead body to turn up definitely won’t. When Mom got sick---” 

“Enough, Jesse.” Harry smiled tightly. “I’ll try.” 

He continued organizing his desk, squaring the corners. “I love you,” Jesse said, and Harry faltered, pushed an envelope out of alignment, then nodded and nudged his glasses up with one finger. Jesse grabbed her bag off the floor. She squeezed his shoulder before she left. Harry turned toward the windows. The snow piled up on the city street, covering mail boxes and street signs, squares of it cut away around cross walks. The people high-kneeing it below were muted. Harry could only hear himself and his own uneven breathing. 

Harry looked old in his reflection: a wrinkled ghost with messy hair. He returned to sitting in front of the computer. The data analysis had been done. Simulation failure. He opened a drawer and slammed it shut three times. The Fake Jay Garrick toppled over the edge. 

* 

An eight-year-old boy presented with the ability to control minds. So far he’d done nothing more sinister than force his parents to give him chocolate cake for dinner and let him stay up to watch R-rated movies, but the very nature of him presented a complication. The child endangered free will. The rehabilitation program so far had assisted the reintegration of physically harmful metahumans functionally into society, not someone who could alter the mind. The boy failed every test and every simulation. He consistently made the wrong choice and acted selfishly. 

“He’s a child,” Harry argued, to the judge, whose only apparent emotion so far had been annoyance at a deep chest cough from one of the spectators. “He has no sense of consequences and cannot be held accountable for actions he hasn’t even committed yet. I need more time.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of the mother and father at the table parallel to Harry’s. “If they don’t want to take responsibility for the child, I’m sure we can find another home for him. Have you considered this is a case of nurture more than nature?” 

From the corner of his eye, Harry saw Mom flinch and cover her mouth. 

“I’m afraid there is no middle ground here,” the judge said. “I’m sorry, Dr. Wells, I am in favor of the parents’ wishes here. The child will remain in cryogenic stasis until the appropriate devices can be implanted into his brain to restrict his impulses.” 

“That’s disgusting,” Harry said. “You’re worried about your free will so you’ll destroy his?” 

Mom burst into tears. The judge started hammering the gavel. 

“Screw you, Wells,” Dad yelled, standing. A meaty man with meaty fists. Hairy, too. “You piece of shit. This is your fault!” 

Harry sighed and turned in time to duck. He didn’t manage to dodge the second hit. He ended up in the second-floor bathroom, mopping up the bloody mess with wads of toilet paper. He prodded at his lower teeth with his tongue and winced when one visibly wiggled. His lip was the size of a strawberry. Jesse would be thrilled she wasn’t the only one walking around looking like a cage fighter. 

* 

At S.T.A.R Labs, there was an elevator which only traveled to the very bottom of the underground floors. On that floor, the temperature dropped noticeably by twenty degrees. Only three people had access to it other than Harry and you could pick them out by the thermals they wore to work. Dr. Rathaway lead the program on that floor and had since Harry piloted it four months ago. Sometimes Harry felt like putting Hartley’s face through a wall, but in a world without Snow or Cisco, Dr. Rathaway would have to do. The steadiness of that conviction was tested daily. 

Harry walked into the lab to find Hartley badgering the two other scientists in front of a white board filled with equations. 

“No,” Hartley said, a red flush climbing his face. He erased the marker erratically, smearing the math, and a muscle in his jaw jumped. “No and no. Where did you find the math you used here? On the back of a cereal box? Did you send away for it from Waste-My-Time-Dot-Com?” 

The two technicians gave each other a look behind Hartley’s back. 

“Rough day?” Harry asked Hartley in passing. Hartley turned and hurled the eraser across the room. The two technicians scurried away to their stations. Harry felt his blood pressure climb and mentally went over Hartley’s potential replacements in his head. For fun. 

“Nice of you to finally show up,” Hartley sneered. “And you combed your hair for once.” 

Harry smiled and slicked a hand up the back of his head. 

“Nope,” Harry said. “What’s the progress?” 

“Progress,” Hartley laughed. He turned to look at his techs, but they had their backs to him, typing importantly on their computers. “He wants progress and he won’t give us more than three data points. Like we’re children.” 

Harry decided not to mention what he’d been capable of doing as a child. Not everyone in the room had solved Einstein’s Riddle. 

“For what I need from you, three should be enough. Back to work, Rathaway. It’s like we have to carry your weight around here.” 

Hartley opened his mouth to rip Harry apart but Harry dismissed him by turning his back. He went to his work area and shut the door firmly behind him. His computer was on. The monitor jumped to life when Harry nudged the mouse. Harry glanced out the glass door and Hartley quickly looked away, erasing the rest of the white board. Not very long ago Harry would have fired someone for entering his office without knocking first. Trying to crack his computer? He would have ruined careers. 

Too bad Hartley was an asset where few remained. 

Harry spent twenty minutes re-encrypting his security and the rest of the day working with the data points he hadn’t given the others. He worked long after Cisco would have spun the chair around and begged him for a coffee break. His hands hovered over the keyboard at the thought and his fingertips ached. Cisco. Lovely Cisco; all that glossy hair. Cisco rolling his eyes and elbowing Harry out of the way---“Don’t touch my stuff, _Har-ry!_ ”---Cisco chewing loudly in Harry’s ear---Harry cracked his knuckles and hunched over his desk, losing himself in the numbers. 

When Harry next looked up, only Hartley remained, squishing problems onto a marker board that had run out of room. As he watched, Hartley yawned and rubbed the back of his neck. Harry pressed a button on his desk and opened up the communication between the rooms. 

“Go home,” Harry said and enjoyed watching Hartley jump and drop the marker. “Get back here early tomorrow and try not to make your technicians quit on their third day again.” 

Hartley turned to him expressionlessly. Like a snake, Harry thought. Harry waved him away. Bye Bye Now. Hartley turned off most of the lights on his way out until Harry was left in a solitary glass cube, a square of light floating at the center of darkness. Harry pulled up the directory of known metahumans and went to work on his second job. It looked like Anna was still failing Gym Class. He’d have to speak to the teacher. In better news, her foster parents were considering adoption. He wondered what she thought of that. 

* 

Harry turned to ask Cisco a question for the second time in fifteen minutes and had to admit it was time to call it a day. He shut down the computer and stood from the work station, cracking his back with a practiced twist. Too much sitting, not even aerobic exercise. He’d have to change that soon. 

Two security guards manned the front desk. One of them looked suspiciously like a police officer Barry had dated on the other earth. The one that had shot him. She smiled nervously when Harry passed, sitting up straighter. Harry tried to smile back, but from the widening of her eyes and the way she scooted back in her chair, Harry assumed his smile was a touch sharper than he’d intended. 

He still felt like the bigger man. 

On the way out of the building, he listened to a message from Jesse telling him she’d be out with friends for the weekend and to please, pretty please, eat something that didn’t come from a can. 

Another lie. She hadn’t dialed a phone number other than his for months. 

Harry drove home with the radio off. He thought of Cisco humming under his breath while he worked, occasionally singing a few song lyrics with distracted clarity. In the time he’d spent there, he’d begun to recognize the songs Cisco favored. Beyoncé. Rhianna. One Direction. 

The radio here felt unfamiliar. There was a Beyoncé, but she was part of a female singing group: Destiny’s Baby. He got caught up in midnight traffic near the night clubs and tapped his thumb against the steering wheel impatiently. Young twenty-somethings crowded the shoveled sidewalks and roads in shiny bits of fabric, buckets of glitter, and poofy jackets. 

When Harry got home, he activated the television with a verbal command and requested the most recent news coverage. A hologram followed him to the kitchen where he warmed up the leftover pizza and ate it without a plate, so quickly he barely noticed Jesse had already picked off all the black olives. The news footage followed him through the house. A forty-five second segment on a mysterious metahuman with super speed caught his eye. 

This unknown metahuman had emptied a train of its passengers just before the train went off the rails. This was the fourth such act this month. The hologram hovered on the glass door while Harry showered. They showed a three second clip from a camera phone of a streak of red light zipping in and out of the train. They had nicknamed the metahuman Lady Quick. Someone claimed they had gotten close enough to notice the speedster was a woman. Harry made a mental note to check in on Barry, just in case. He rinsed the soap from his hair and the suds ran off his toes, circling the drain. 

Harry crawled into his enormous bed at just past one in the morning and settled under a thin layer of sheets. The hologram floated above his head on command. The newsreel had ended without looping and turned into a screensaver that reacted to the electrical impulses in his brain, a ball of shifting light and color. No such thing existed on the other earth. It wouldn’t for years. Harry watched it for a while with his arms under his head. 

As they invariably did, Harry’s thoughts turned to Cisco and the ball of light brightened and reached outward with tendrils of red and pink. It pulsed like a heartbeat. The bed stretched out on every side of him. He couldn’t reach the edges of it with his fingers while lying in the center. What would Cisco think of a bed like this, would he roll around in it like a heathen, messing up the sheets---or maybe sink into it slowly, hair spread out under him, and Harry would climb in, climb over, cup his hand around Cisco’s hip carefully and--- 

And what. Nothing, Old Man. 

Harry stopped his hand where it had inched toward his dick. He didn’t have the energy for that. He kicked the sheets off and rolled over onto his belly, folding the pillow in half under his cheek. The screensaver sparked an angry, erratic yellow. 

Harry fell asleep considering the texture of Cisco’s hair. He’d never touched it. 

* 

Christmas and New Year’s came and went. Less people got in the way at work, but more of them crowded the sidewalks, filled the taxis, waited in front of restaurants. Noisy. Smelly. Emotional. Harry paid an intern to do his grocery shopping. And the company holiday shopping. He was sure the employees would be very happy with whatever very expensive gift they ended up with. 

For Jesse, Harry built a gift with his own hands. 

It was a necklace similar in style to the one her mother had worn but had lost a few years after Jesse was born. A sapphire that would match her eyes. It doubled as a non-lethal light bomb, naturally. 

Harry built twelve of the necklaces and presented them all in the same box. He half expected her to hate it, to be honest, and he’d bought her a new car as safety net, but she threw her arms around his neck and squeezed hard enough to leave welts. He’d save the car for another time. 

Despite not needing to shop, Harry stopped by the mall one afternoon and found himself in the men’s section of a department store. He floated through the racks without a goal until he came upon rows and rows of screen printed t-shirts. Lady Quick already had her own t-shirt, even though no one had captured more of her than a streak of light. Harry fingered the sleeve of one of the front shirts. At this point last year, he’d developed enough of a relationship with Cisco to mock his fashion choices. 

It had normally back fired, of course. Harry refused to watch Men In Black OR The Matrix. 

On a whim Harry bought an entire rack and had the cashier package them. While waiting in traffic he stared at the pile of gift bags sitting in his passenger seat. Colorful tissue paper poked out between the handles. Growling at himself, he threw his blinker on and did an illegal U turn, tires bouncing over the curb. The car behind him laid on their horn. Harry rolled down the window as he passed and stuck his hand out, finger all the way raised. The woman honked again and returned the gesture, nail a glittery, festive red and green. 

The shirts were donated anonymously to a local homeless center. 

On New Year’s Eve, Jesse went out and Harry stayed home. He opened a bottle of champagne, let it fizz all over the couch and rug, and drank straight from the bottle while he watched the year change on the television. On the other earth, they’d be watching the ball drop at a crowded bar somewhere. Snow would be red from too many wine coolers and leaning on people to keep herself upright while pretending she wasn’t. Barry and Iris would probably be cuddled up in a corner somewhere. And Cisco. Where would Cisco be. Would there be someone to kiss him? 

To, to pin his face between their hands, and--- 

Harry drank too much. When the news coverage changed to other events, it showed footage of Lady Quick saving a little girl from falling through the ice into the lake. A toddler wobbled at the center of the lake while the father inched toward her with his outstretched hands. The ice cracked, the camera wobbled, and people screamed, then the red light zoomed in, plucked the girl up and placed her back in her father’s arm. Lady Quick streaked away without giving a good camera angle and left the father and child in a mess of static electricity that made their hair stick up. The little girl laughed delightedly, curls bouncing under her winter hat, and broke a thousand hearts. Idiot. 

When Harry woke up, the champagne bottle had tipped over onto its side and leaked out. Harry peeled himself off the couch, skin making a tearing sound as it parted from the leather. Harry hobbled to the bathroom to throw up in the dark. 

Jesse came home two days later and she looked pale. Maybe a little sad. Too much like the girl he’d tucked into bed the night after her mother’s funeral. Harry wanted to ask her what was wrong but there was a long history of the answer being him. Instead, he made her breakfast and delivered it to the gym, where she was sitting on the floor, stretching. She ate an entire pan of scrambled eggs and some of his, too. She didn’t look any happier, but some color returned to her cheeks. 

* 

Harry had a photograph. One. He’d stolen it off Snow’s desk, frame and everything, just before saying goodbye to them and traveling home. It hadn’t been an impulse. He’d gone into her work area knowing exactly what he wanted. There were four other photos. He needed the one. She wouldn’t miss it. He didn’t let himself think about it. 

Harry, Cisco, and Barry. Barry was smiling like a loon, so big his eyes vanished and sticking up bunny ears behind Cisco’s head. Cisco was in the center, arms crossed crookedly and a twizzler sticking out of his mouth like a cigar, and Harry--- 

He was smiling, maybe. Even he wasn’t sure. He had a hand on Cisco’s shoulder. 

Harry had come home from a night pursuing rogue metahumans and found it on the fireplace mantle right next to the photos of Jesse’s graduation. Of her first footsteps. And of his wife. Jesse must have dug it out of the travel bag he’d never unpacked. Harry walked past it at least twice a day. It had shifted a few times, like Jesse took it down to look at it. Maybe she missed them, too. 

A few days before Christmas he’d discovered tiny red Santa hats pasted above their heads. When New Year’s had rolled in, they’d been replaced by party hats and Cisco’s twizzler had become a sparkly noisemaker. On Valentine’s day, Jesse covered all their eyes with pink hearts. 

It went on like that. 

* 

At the first sign of spring, Harry went for a walk. Snow melted in his path, light cutting ice into puddles of slush. He passed a billboard advocating metahuman rights with the face of Bernie Sanders in the corner. There was an election next year and metahumans were a divisive talking point. He ended up at the graveyard. The grass was beginning to peek through under sections of melted snow. Sara’s grave was toward the middle, down a long winding path filled with granite statues saluting dead veterans. It had been years since he’d visited. He ran his fingertips over the simple polished stone and then flicked the bright spinning wheel Jesse had stuck in the ground. It whirred to life, flashing colors at him. 

“We’re a mess without you,” Harry said. He crouched down and scraped some of the remaining snow off of the bottom part of the stone. “But we’re alive and safe. I kept my promise to you.” 

When he got home, Harry found Jesse eating her way through a stack of waffles as big as her head. She paused when she saw him, swallowing. Harry pulled his scarf off and hung it on the hook by the kitchen door. He nearly tripped over her muddy running shoes where they’d been left in the middle of the floor, soles practically torn off. He decided not to ask and went to shower and get ready to put in time with that asshole Hartley. An alert pinged his wrist watch. Harry pulled it up and projected it on the bathroom mirror while he brushed his teeth. 

Detective West appeared, apparently already at her desk. 

“Sorry for the early call,” she started and her eyes wandered a little. Harry realized he was shirtless still and grabbed a towel, draping it around his neck. “I thought you’d want to know.” 

“What is it, Detective?” 

“Reverb,” West said softly. Her eyes were the color of tree bark. Earthy and wet. “They found his body. I confirmed it myself last night.” 

“I can leave in five,” Harry said and moved to hang up. 

She stopped him with a shake of her head. Harry hesitated, dripping water on his watch. 

“I’m not authorizing that, Harry.” She held up a hand to stall his objection. “His body was in an advanced state of decomposition. I identified him using dental records. Your assistance is unnecessary and---I don’t want you to see that. I’m sorry.” 

“Iris,” Harry said. “Please.” 

“It’s not your Cisco, Harry, any more than that other Barry was mine. Let it go. I’ll locate his parents and inform them myself.” 

“They fucked off to Hawaii.” Harry knew which hotel they were in this week. “There’s no point.” 

“People change,” Iris said. “You, for example.” 

She hung up. When Harry tried to swipe his badge at the door of the morgue, the computer screen lit up with a red exclamation point and a guard stepped through, shaking his head. Security footage would show Harry throwing his arms up in the air and the veins bulging in his neck and temples while he yelled, but the security guard stood silently, squarely, hands on his belt. 

Harry went to work. He oversaw the technological aspect to his company and the political ramifications of being a metahuman ally during the day. In the evenings, he assisted the retrieval team when he wasn’t more of a liability than an asset. Felicity seemed determined to keep him away from her computers. He saw Dr. Rathaway very little for a few weeks, and by the progressively inventive insults Hartley managed to fit into his progress e-mails, this went unappreciated. Harry hadn’t realized he was such good company. He was flattered, honestly. 

It was on a bad night, a really bad night, when the teams were too late to a catalyst site where a metahuman turned, that Harry gave in. He checked that Jesse was out, even though she was always out, then showered off the blood and sweat, spending extra time going through his hair to get the pieces of skull and brain out. What might have been a tooth fragment fell out from behind his ear. Harry scrubbed himself down until he was pink and burning. 

In the bedroom, he set his glasses on his dresser and climbed into bed naked. He laid there for a while, staring at the patches of ice crystalized over the window. 

“It’s okay,” Cisco would say, scrubbing a comforting hand up and down Harry’s bare shoulder. “You did your best. Harry. Relax a little.” 

Harry bit his lip. Cisco was too young. Too far away. Don’t do this. 

Cisco leaned in and the tips of his hair brushed the underside of Harry’s arm, sending goosebumps spiraling outward. He kissed the join of Harry’s shoulder and neck. 

Harry shivered and shut his eyes. His stomach knotted. He snuck his hand under himself as he imagined Cisco licking his neck and trailing talented fingertips down his spine, just a tease of contact. A tease was enough. Harry lifted his hips, settled his weight on his knees and got a good grip on his dick. He stroked just the head at first, tight movements that made him flinch, then dragged his fist from root to tip, squeezing. He made a cut off noise into the pillow. In his head, Cisco kissed his back and bit into his trapeze muscle nearly too hard, the vicious little bitch. Harry jerked his dick, thighs already starting to tremble. Fuck, he needed this. C’mon, Cisco. Come. On. 

Cisco laughed against his skin, twisting closer. His dick brushed Harry’s hip, and imagining it, the damp insistent press of it, made Harry twitch. He sawed at himself, huffing. 

No, no. Not just that. Make it really good. Cisco bent over for him, hitched his thigh up on a pillow and the red flesh of testicles between his legs was visible, covered in just a bit of dark curls. Cisco reached back, cupped his own ass cheek, and pulled it slightly to the side and--- 

“Are you just gonna look?” Cisco jeered. “Or are you gonna fuck me?” 

Harry keened as he lost his fucking mind, ropes of come soaking his knuckles and the bed sheets, hips flexing uselessly to get closer. When it was over, he collapsed forward onto his arm and into the disgusting puddle of weakness he’d left under himself. He felt hollow, dragged out under a bright light and made gutless by a metal spoon. In his mind’s eye, Harry covered Cisco up with a sheet. A crisp sheet, clean and starched. He slunk down next to this safe Cisco and watched over him in penitence, as chaste as the unlit wick of a candle in church. 

* 

In April, Hartley presented his findings. Baby birds had woken Harry up that morning, chirping enthusiastically at their mother. They’d built a nest outside of his window. Harry should have known that small joy would find a way to balance. 

“Ten years,” Hartley said. “Minimum.” 

Harry circled the simulation, watched the hologram spin to life and rocket some future him back to the other earth, then jerk to the start and loop through the process all over again. 

“Ten years,” Harry echoed, reaching out to touch the light. It had no weight or heat. Little pink stars burst on the surface of his hand. “Ten years?” 

Hartley’s team whispered among themselves, shifting together nervously. The girl with the glasses leaned in to say something to Hartley, but he held up his palm and she backed off. Hartley tugged at his earlobe, scowling, then came to stand next to Harry with a clipboard. 

“Maybe nine if you can provide us with more data points.” 

Harry looked at him. Hard. 

“Not good enough,” he said. “Do better.” 

He moved to turn away and Hartley reached out, grabbing him by the arm. 

“You’re not listening, you idiot,” Hartley hissed. “Ten years is if everything goes smoothly! Some of the technology needed is years away from development. If even the smallest mistake is made, the left behind radioactive waste could destroy the entire city.” 

Harry looked down at Hartley’s hand on his arm. 

“Maybe you’re not the right man for the job,” Harry said, looking up. 

Hartley fizzed red to the tips of his ears. 

“Maybe the problem isn’t with me,” Hartley hissed. “You think we haven’t heard the rumors? Your new fixation on metahuman rights is really convenient. You have some sweet young meta girl on the hook somewhere, don’t you? I guess you’re finally over your dead wife.” 

Maybe it was a threshold thing. Hartley had said much, much worse. The pain didn’t come until after, when his ears stopped ringing and the orbs around his vision faded. Hartley was on his knees at that point, holding his face, blood spilling between his cupped hands. 

“Motherfucker,” Hartley screeched. “You broke my nose! You crazy megalomaniac bastard! Ouch, ouch, stop--” He slapped away the help of the girl. “Don’t touch it, it’s broken!” 

Harry shook out his hand numbly, watching the blood drip off Hartley’s hand onto the floor. 

“Um,” the other tech whispered. “Dr. Wells, should we.” 

Harry sighed. “Get him to the hospital. And send me the bill. After that, you’re all fired.” 

They gasped in unison and looked at him with bunny eyes like Snow. 

Jesus Christ. 

“Ok, Hartley’s fired. You guys are---transferred. Figure it out with personnel, I don’t particularly care where you work. Breathe a word about this project and I will decimate your careers, understand?” 

They stayed frozen for point two seconds, then scrambled and picked Hartley up by his armpits, ignoring his struggling and spitting as they hauled him out of the room, feet dragging behind him. That would probably be a problem later. The elevator shut on them and took the noise away. 

Harry flexed his fingers and pain shot up his wrist. He twisted it and eyed the bone where it bulged up at him oddly. He needed to learn how to throw a better punch if he was going to keep picking fights. After wrapping the hand and wrist in a bandage, Harry rolled a desk chair to the center of the room and opened up the simulation again, looking at it from all angles. The schematics were fantastic, a dazzling display of light and numbers that made perfect sense. In ten years, travel in the multiverse without super speed would be possible. Hartley’s equation was perfect. 

Ten years, Harry thought, and the simulation dimmed, turning blue. 

When Jesse found him three hours later, Harry was leaning against the wall of Hartley’s work station, throwing a tennis ball up in the air and catching it. He paused when she came in, twisting the ball in his hands, then tossed it up again. She followed the trajectory with her eyes, then came to squat next to him, looking at the frozen simulation. 

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, diagrams reflected in her eyes. 

“For what it’s worth.” Harry shrugged and didn’t bother watching the simulation loop with her. “It’s too far in the future to invest serious time into. I’ll have to figure out a simpler, less dangerous power source. Hartley can take credit for this dinosaur.” 

“How far?” 

“Ten years,” he said. “Hartley’s work is impeccable. He’s an asshole, but he’s not wrong.” 

Jesse fingered a stray thread dangling from Harry’s wrist bandage. 

“Did you really break his nose?” 

Harry tossed the ball and caught it. “News travels fast.” 

“Small town,” Jesse said, which no, it was in fact not a small town at all. Jesse just had spies everywhere. “You know better than to punch your problems. Wait, no you don’t.” 

Harry ignored her. “How’d you get in here anyway?” 

“C’mon, Dad.” Jesse tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “I’ve known all your passwords since I was twelve.” 

Harry couldn’t laugh even though he wanted to. He rested his head on the wall and stared at his last hope floating above their heads, dimensions shifting through mid-air. The drawing board was blank again. He was right back where he had started months ago. Stuck here. 

“I don’t think I can wait that long, Jesse,” Harry admitted. He wanted to reach up and tear at his hair, but Jesse was there. He couldn’t do that in front of Jesse. “It’s been too long already. I need to know he’s safe.” 

“He? Not they?” 

“Both,” Harry said half-heartedly. 

Jesse put a hand on his knee. “Are you in love with Cisco?” 

Harry said nothing for a while, then simply nodded. It didn’t change anything for her to know. Jesse shut her eyes and swallowed. When she opened them again, they were sparkling with tears. Harry shifted a little, trying to shake himself out of it and put his Dad cap back on. 

“I’m not upset,” she said thickly, struggling. “Don’t start. Mom died a long time ago. I don’t want you to be alone. I feel like I got in the way somehow and it---it really kills me that you’re not happy right now and I did that to you. Me.” She laughed wetly. “I did it. I’m so sorry.” 

“Jesse.” Harry tangled his hand in the one she had on his knee. “You could never get in the way. Anything good I’ve ever done has been to make you proud of me.” 

“Pride,” Jesse said. She sat back on her heels. “I know a little bit about that. I want you to be proud of me, too. I want---to do things a little differently around here, actually. Can I show you something and can you maybe not yell at me for it? I’m still pretty sensitive about it.” 

Harry frowned and squeezed her hand. “What are you talking about?” 

Jesse took a deep breath. “I’ve been keeping something from you,” she said. 

She took the tennis ball out of his hand and ran her thumb over the felt surface. And then she threw it across the room, hard, a shock of air slapping Harry in the face. An even stronger blast of air hit him next, lifting his hair and making his clothes flap. With a streak of light that was actually more orange than red, Jesse was across the room, holding the same ball she’d tossed. 

She smiled at him hesitantly, threw the ball up in the air and caught it, fingers clawed. 

Harry grabbed his chest and wondered if he was having a heart attack. 

“Don’t yell,” she reminded him cheerfully. 

* 

They ran tests. Harry rigged up a treadmill that was a close cousin to the one Cisco had engineered. Jesse could reach speeds close to that which Barry had accomplished prior to entering the speed force. Her healing wasn’t as accelerated, much to Harry’s displeasure, but according to her, it had sped up over time. The more she ran, Jesse explained, the more she could do. She would need a push to get faster, to open up more abilities. 

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” Harry said, as he prepped Jesse to leap over a cliff edge. He’d watched this go bad once before. When he scuffed his foot on the ground, a pebble skidded over the edge and fell soundlessly away. He tugged on the parachute he’d attached to her back just in case, checking the straps and wires. “I’ve never been a fan of extreme sports.” 

“Not when I’m doing them anyway,” Jesse said, slapping his hands away. She started running at a normal speed. “Take a picture, Dad! Cowabunga!” 

There was a bright orange flash. She made the jump, but broke her ankle. 

It healed by morning. 

Jesse went out superheroing that afternoon and Harry stayed behind in the lab, monitoring metahuman activity and the police radio for more average crime. It felt like sliding into old, comfortable clothes and something out of place settled in him. They saved two lives that week and stopped a dozen petty crimes. Little boys and girls began carrying lunch boxes and backpacks with her name on them. Before long, she needed a suit. 

The tread on Jesse’s shoes ran down absurdly fast as she pushed herself to run faster, to go harder; regular sneakers flayed off at the seams. It explained her shoe budget over the previous months. Harry stayed up well into the morning hours several nights in a row trying to bring their vision to life. Something light but resistant. Nothing that would restrict motion. She argued that she wanted her legs free and a skirt would work just fine. Harry reminded her that he had killed a man, so no. 

The first costume they designed was blue and green, and while the basic shape was perfect, Jesse curled her nose up when she turned in the mirror, sticking a leg out. She repeated the motion on the other side and looked even more unhappy. 

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not good, right?” 

“It’ll function,” Harry said. “But maybe. Red and yellow?” 

Harry spent the afternoon huddled under the florescent glow of a lamp. Sweat beaded under his nose and in his hair as he bent over the swatches of body armor. He sewed with precision; the same attention to detail as he would use on a microchip. Alone in his lab while she ran drills on rooftops, Harry felt two cords pulling at him for attention. They didn’t fight each other exactly, but existed simultaneously as if in counterbalance. 

The first, of course, was Jesse. The suit would protect his baby girl and the weight of that was in his hands. The second was Cisco, who he had often seen hunched in this exact position, eyes huge behind a magnifier as he tried to fix even the smallest rips in Barry’s suit. Harry’s fingers trembled and he stabbed his thumb. Under the magnifying glass, the drop of blood that welled up was enormous. 

When Jesse put on the new suit, a switch flipped in Harry’s head. Windows lifted. Light flooded in as if all the doors had been left open. 

She turned to him and he slid her helmet and goggles in place. 

“Go,” he said, waving. “Do the hero thing. Call if you need me.” 

She grinned and blasted away, knocking up a tornado of papers. Harry sighed and stared at the mess, then decided he didn’t care and went to get a mug of instant soup. 

She never called. 

* 

Around Harry’s birthday, the photo on the mantle disappeared. It seemed out of character for Jesse to have taken it down, so Harry didn’t ask. He could picture their faces with startling detail without the daily reminder. The night before Harry’s birthday, Jesse came to see him at the bottom floor of S.T.A.R. Labs carrying a red box tied up in a yellow bow. 

“It’s not my birthday yet,” Harry said when she thrust the box at him. 

Jesse pushed the box into his hands. “I couldn’t wait. You kept moping about it.” 

“About what?” 

“Just open it,” Jesse said, and when he hesitated, she undid the bow herself. 

The box fell apart instantly. Inside was the missing photo. She’d done some digital work to it this time. Cisco had a speech bubble floating by his mouth that said, “Hiya, Harry,” and behind them she’d added a bunch of balloons and a hanging sign that said, ‘Welcome Home.’ She’d photoshopped Harry into a classic astronaut suit, his face lit up inside the helmet. He was holding a flag. Harry dragged his thumbnail along the glass over Cisco’s smiling cheek. When he looked up, Jesse was smiling sadly and all at once, she looked exactly like her mother. Sara was always a little sad. 

“Are you sure?” he asked. 

“I’ll be fine on my own,” Jesse said. “I can do this, Dad. I’m fast enough. Isn’t this what you were training me for?” 

Had it been? Not only that, no. But--- 

Harry stood and hugged her for a long time. 

“Thank you,” he whispered into her hair. 

* 

Preparing to travel to an alternate reality turned out to be stupidly simple. The police seemed a little too happy to be dealing with Jesse as a metahuman consultant instead of him. Maybe it had something to do with how little she yelled at them. Little did they know that what she lacked in volume, she made up for with insidious emotional manipulation. The company was always meant to pass to Jesse; she knew everyone by name there. If she needed any help, she wouldn’t lack offers. 

Of course there was the matter of Lady Quick. What if there was trouble, what if she was hurt and needed help, what if someone like Zoom--- 

“Not everything needs to be tied up into a neat little bow,” Jesse said. “I’ll figure it out, Dad. Grown ass woman. Right here. With your nose.” 

Harry frowned. “That’s at least sixty percent your mother’s nose. Look at that little curve, you see, mine doesn’t do that---“ 

Jesse streaked away. He managed to weasel a promise out of her to contact Felicity. If anyone could help Jesse superhero, it would be Felicity’s team. 

On the night he was to leave, Harry packed as many black outfits as he could fit into a large canvas bag. He filled the secret compartments of his clothes with weapons. Gas bombs. Electric knives. A gun or two. Jesse zigged and zagged around the room, helping him pick up items he’d forgotten and filling the cubbies and pockets of the bag with them. She picked up a photo of her mom off his bedroom nightstand and held it up to him with a question in her eyes. Harry nodded. She put it in the bag. 

A headache had started behind Harry’s eye the second he got out of bed that morning and swallowed the entire front side of his head by the time they were done packing. His hands shook as he zipped the second bag shut. He should probably eat something. 

“Are you worried about me?” Jesse asked, sitting on the bed. 

Harry hung the strap of the bag around his chest. The weight of it made his knees dip. 

“Not as much as I thought I would,” he admitted. “Does that make me a bad father?” 

She smiled a little weakly. 

“I’ll come back,” he said, sitting beside her. “As soon as I can.” 

“I know.” She laughed and looked at her feet in the Lady Quick suit. “Can you believe I’m the one more worried here? You’re a trouble magnet, Harry. I feel like I’m sending my kid off to war.” 

“Don’t call me Harry,” he said automatically. 

She crossed her eyes at him. He laughed and cuffed her gently on the back of the head. 

“I’ll be careful,” he promised. “I think you should be more worried that I’m going to come back moping and heartbroken. Cisco is in his twenties, Jesse. He’s not going to be interested in me.” 

“Love works in mysterious ways,” Jesse said sagely. She stared at him hard, like a drill sergeant examining a fresh recruit, then clapped her hands together and hopped to her feet. “Come on, Pops! The daylight is wasting.” 

It was night, actually. Harry let it go. Jesse hefted the other bag and led the way. Electricity crackled under her shoes as she walked as if she’d stored it up. Outside the house, she lit up the driveway with light and threw open a wobbling doorway of blue energy. It wavered on her skin like the reflection off a body of water. There was more to say. There always was. Be careful. I love you. I’m proud of you. Harry didn’t want it to feel like a goodbye though. He nodded and she secured an arm around his ribs, tight enough to restrict breathing. 

“Take a deep breath,” she said, like they were about to jump into a lake. 

And then she ran. 

* 

He knocked on Cisco’s apartment door. Three sharp raps. He waited with his hands shoved in his jacket pockets and his breathing too loud in his ears. There was no answer for a moment, and he considered that though it was late, maybe he should have gone to the lab first, but then he heard footsteps approaching rapidly and his heart pitched and kicked like a stung horse. Cisco pulled the door open and Harry blinked rapidly at him, absorbing: hair in a messy bun, three-day old beard, stained t-shirt and ripped up jeans. There were lines on Cisco’s face, probably from a pillow. 

Harry wanted to shove inside and take him apart, starting with the mouth. Get inside the jeans. Rip the shirt off at the seams. The elaborate fantasy took all of half a second. 

Cisco frowned at him somewhat vacantly. He glanced around Harry’s shoulder, then down the hall, then back at Harry. Harry stared at him hungrily. Cisco frowned harder. 

“Hello?” Cisco said, like a question. 

“Cisco,” Harry said, a dry rasp. He swayed forward and his hands fisted in his pockets. 

Cisco backed up in faint surprise, a barrier dropping down between them. 

“Cisco,” Harry tried again. He looked for the words he’d practiced and didn’t find them. “Hi, I’m. Well, I came home. You’re not hurt. I can see that. That’s good.” He was rambling. He wanted to tape his own mouth shut. “What happened to visiting me?” 

Cisco tilted his head and looked him up and down. A familiar blankness flattened his face as his eyes focused inward, a hundred lives lived and discarded in the collapse of his pupils. 

“Oh, fuck,” Cisco said at last, nearly under his breath. He rubbed his temple and stared at Harry like he was the embodiment of a headache, before sighing. “Look, um, Dr. Wells is it? I don’t think I’m the Cisco you’re looking for.” 

Harry shook his head. Was this---the gentle let down? It wasn’t like Cisco to be gentle. 

“I don’t know what that means,” Harry said faintly. He stared at Cisco’s twisting mouth dumbly. His heart beat insistently---it was Cisco. His Cisco. Within arm’s reach. He could just---snatch him up. 

“Come inside.” Cisco stepped out of the way and waved his hand. “Harrison? Harry. Yeah, it’s Harry, isn’t it? We should talk. I could use your help actually. The Dr. Wells I’m familiar with is a serious fucknut of the highest order. He still won’t take my phone calls. He thinks I’m off my rocker.” Cisco chuckled. “Ha! Try living with a universe in your head and see how well you follow basic social cues, am I right or am I right?” 

Harry stepped inside Cisco’s apartment carefully and waited while Cisco locked up behind them. Cisco gestured to follow him, so Harry did, down a dark hallway, past a living room with only the television light flickering, beyond a kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes. He could hear a baby crying in the next apartment. Harry stared at the outline of Cisco ahead of him. He felt numb. 

At the end of the hallway, Cisco stopped at a door that was padlocked shut. He pulled a key out of his pocket and smiled at Harry uncertainly. 

“I couldn’t afford the retina scan,” Cisco joked. 

If Harry opened his mouth, he was going to eat Cisco alive. Cisco’s smile faded and he opened the door. Inside the room, a series of motherboards overheated in the air conditioning. Cisco had a fan pointed directly at the biggest one. A bag of half eaten Cheetos spilled out on the surface of a desk. Harry’s eyes skittered over everything. Cisco had a little bed shoved in the corner, with the sheets all messed up, _fucking hell_ , but the real show was on the walls. At least three dozen photos and newspaper articles were tacked up and connected by yarns in red, green, and blue. He saw a picture of Barry at the center of it. All of the threads lead back to him. 

“What is this?” Harry asked uneasily. 

Cisco opened his mouth, looking at his feet. 

“And why won’t you look at me?” Harry cut in. 

“For your second question---it hurts my head. I look at you and know you and don’t know you.” He counted down a list on his fingers. “If I look at you for too long it will give me a nosebleed, then a migraine, and then a seizure.” 

Harry stared at the side of his face. He couldn’t connect what Cisco was saying with any sort of meaning. He felt like he was standing outside of the room still. Cisco bit his lip and ran his finger over one of the green threads, leading to an article about the failed attempted murder of Nora Allen. 

“This,” Cisco said. “This is what I need your help with. The speedforce led you here for this.” 

Harry turned to face the wall with him. 

“It’s the timeline,” Cisco said. “It’s all wrong. And it’s killing me.” 

Harry sat down in the desk chair closest to Cisco and stared blankly at the wall, the web of different information connected to form a bigger picture. He could feel how fucked they were far off, like a storm rolling in over the mountains. More immediately, he acknowledged the careful distance Cisco kept between them, the way Cisco kept clasping and unclasping his hands. This Cisco didn’t know him. The connection that they had nursed had no place in this world, not right now. 

Harry took his glasses off and polished the lenses with his sleeve. He put them back on and pushed them up his nose with one finger. 

“Close your eyes,” Harry said. 

“What?” 

“Just do it, Ramon,” Harry said. 

“Ramon,” Cisco mouthed grumpily. He threw his hands up in the air. “Ok, whatever, do your worst, Space Man.” 

When Cisco followed through, Harry stood up and took hold of him by the shoulders. He stared hard at Cisco’s face in the cool glow of the computer monitors: the smooth slope of his forehead, the cute rounded tip of his nose, and the annoyingly full bottom lip. Cisco’s eyes worked under his eyelids, like he wanted to open them. Harry put one hand on Cisco’s cheek, and ignoring the flinch, leaned in to press his mouth to Cisco’s. It was selfish. He knew it would hurt. Cisco would suffer for it. But Harry had waited, and waited, and he’d come this far only to discover there was so much further to go before he could really be home again, and he needed this. 

He needed more than this. He needed something that wasn’t here. 

Cisco kissed back like he was following a script. Even that made Harry’s dick hard, swell up in the leg of his jeans and ache to find some resolution, but it wasn’t enough. He loved Cisco. This Cisco was right---he wasn’t the Cisco Harry was looking for. 

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, pulling back. He cleared his throat. 

Cisco shook his head, wiping a trickle of blood away from his upper lip. 

“It’s like that, huh?” Cisco said quietly. “So I guess this means that you’ll help me?” 

Harry stepped back and turned to the wall, to the picture of Barry, adult Barry, on graduation day, ensconced in the arms of both his parents. Cisco came to stand beside him. The potential energy between them felt like a brick wall. 

“How soon can we start?” Harry asked. 

****

end.

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been a serious pain in the ass this week. It's all I've been able to think about and a real life doesn't really appreciate things like that, right? 
> 
> Some brief notes because I am torn up about this story: I wanted to explore Harry and Jesse's relationship, Harry taking responsibility for his mistakes, and I truly hate the idea of so many metahumans being bad guys, so I wanted a bit of that in there. Mostly I wanted Harry to find a way back to Cisco, to the screwed up timeline where Cisco doesn't know him, I wanted Harry to decide and fixate on that decision like he does. That's the story I wrote. My hopes are pinned on only Earth One's timeline being screwed. I want Harry to come back and save the day. So. Surprise! He probably saves the day! I also kind of hand-wavey made Jess a breecher, but it's what I want. The speedforce loves her and would make it so! It's an open ending, but my interpretation of that is a happy open ending. The boys are back together! All is right with the world.
> 
> There are a few deleted scenes I might share on my tumblr. *cough*sexyscenes*cough* I originally wrote beyond the point where we ended but I realized I didn't have the skill to write the rest of the story in my head. Maybe someday. If you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed the story and I would love feedback.
> 
> Feel free to follow or send me an ask @ fabella-aka-wistfulfever.tumblr.com. It's pretty shippy about these two right now.


End file.
